Prom.

Depending on what you’re like, this word can bring extreme excitement or complete dread. Each year, almost every girl stresses about who she will go with, if she’ll find the right dress, and what group she’ll be in. And each year, almost every guy contemplates whether he should go, if he really has to wear a tux, and most importantly, if the restaurant his group chooses will have steak or mac and cheese. All I have heard after returning from spring break is prom talk. I truly cannot walk down the hall without hearing a group of friends arguing about who is “allowed” to be in their group or where they will go to sleepover after post prom. Within the last month, I have had at least 20 people come up to me asking who I am going to prom with (shoutout to Max Techau) and what my dress looks like. As cliché as prom is, there is no need to make a big deal out of it.

Shockingly enough, spending too much time worrying about prom will actually make it less fun. With this being my third year going t0 prom, I have honestly learned to relax and not take things so seriously. As a sophomore, I meticulously planned out who I wanted to take me to prom and how I would get him to ask me. I knew I couldn’t go unless an upperclassman asked me, and with the majority of my friends at the time being juniors, I didn’t want to miss out on all the fun. After being asked by a senior, I found the perfect dress, practiced my makeup, and then patiently waited for prom night to come. I imagined walking at Grand March with my date with everyone looking at us. I imagined it being magical. Although sophomore year prom was amazing and lived up to all my expectations, it wasn’t the best thing that will ever happen in my life. Junior year prom came and went, and quite honestly, I was happy it went. Because sophomore year prom was one of my most memorable nights, I had some pretty high expectations. I was a junior, and this was finally my year to go. There would be no upperclassmen mad that I was stealing their date, so what could go wrong this year? Well, everything. Everything went wrong this year. My high expectations only set the night up for failure from the beginning. After not living up to my expectations from sophomore year prom, I was extremely disappointed. I wanted junior prom to be just as fun, if not better.